#point-of-sale
POS system selection, pricing, hardware, and reconciliation for restaurants and retail businesses
Starting November 4, 2026, SNAP-authorized small stores must stock 7 varieties in each of 4 staple food categories — 84 units total, up from 36 — with perishables in 3 categories, or risk losing EBT authorization. How to map varieties, track depth, flag perishables, and file invoices in your books before an FNS inspection.
Seventeen states run back-to-school sales tax holidays in summer 2026, from Florida's 32-day window to Iowa's Friday-Saturday weekend, each with its own price caps — $75 clothing in Ohio, $300 in Connecticut, $40 on Maryland backpacks. Participation is mandatory for most registered retailers, and destination sourcing means online sellers with nexus must honor the holiday of the delivery state.
Paint-and-sip and candle studios ring one ticket that is three revenue types, two tax treatments, and a deferred liability. Here is how to split ticket, beverage, and retail revenue at the POS, book gift cards and deposits as deferred revenue, and track pour cost so month-end takes 30 minutes.
A mandatory service charge fails the IRS four-factor tip test, so it is wages rather than tip income — you owe both FICA shares on it, lose the Section 45B credit on Form 8846, and it is excluded from the new OBBBA qualified-tip deduction. Covers the four-factor test, the journal entries that keep Service Charge Revenue separate from Tips Payable, and the payroll, tip-credit, sales tax, and fee-disclosure changes a restaurant hits the day it switches.
Percentage rent by vendor (8–15% of gross sales, booked as ASC 842 variable lease income), CAM pools with annual true-ups, and one POS settlement split across a dozen merchants — the account structure a food hall operator needs, plus the benchmarks (revenue per square foot, bar share, occupancy) that show a hall is working.
Nonprofit thrift store bookkeeping covers the fair value and sold-price methods for donated inventory, IRS Publication 561 receipt thresholds, the roughly 85% volunteer-labor and donated-merchandise UBIT exclusions, and when Form 990-T filing is required.
Alabama's state 2% grocery tax was suspended May 1–June 30, 2026 via Act 2026-604. Learn what qualifies as SNAP-eligible food, how retailers must still report gross sales, and the county/city tax that remains.
Square is free and simple, Shopify wins for ecommerce, Clover lets you choose a processor, Helcim is interchange-plus. Learn the fee, hardware, and bookkeeping differences that decide the right POS in 2026.
New York's General Business Law § 396-ii took effect March 21, 2026, requiring statewide retailers and restaurants to accept cash and barring cash surcharges, with civil penalties up to $1,000 for a first violation and $1,500 for each one after.
U.S. retailers lost $90–112 billion to inventory shrinkage in the latest reporting cycle, an average shrink rate near 1.6% of sales. This guide shows small retailers how to book shrink in a dedicated expense account instead of burying it in COGS — with the exact journal entries, cycle-counting schedules, materiality thresholds, and the process fixes behind the ~70% of shrink that isn't theft.
Square, Toast, and Clover each target a different business — Square starts free at 2.6% + 15¢, Toast locks restaurants into 2-year contracts, and Clover's hardware runs $500–$1,799+. This guide compares real costs by transaction volume and explains the three-way reconciliation problem POS data creates in your books.
The U.S. minted its last penny on November 12, 2025, and 19 states have enacted cash-rounding laws in 2026 with no federal standard yet in force. Most states let retailers round cash totals to the nearest nickel at their discretion, Arizona mandates Canadian-style rounding, and Indiana treats rounding gains and losses as income adjustments. Here is how the rules differ, why sales tax is always calculated on the pre-rounding price, and how to book rounding variances so they stay auditable.
